‘Farage is a snake-oil salesman': The unions left reeling by Reform's working-class surge

Yahoo

11-05-2025

When Unite, Labour's biggest union backer, ran a private poll of its members before last year's general election, the results were eye-opening.
Although Labour led, union chiefs were alarmed to discover growing support for Nigel Farage's Reform.
'People vote against things that are in their own interest – it's a trick, and it's a clever trick, of the populist Right,' argues a senior Unite insider, describing it as an example of 'very wealthy people plugging into the zeitgeist of workers'.
They add: 'Is Reform a friend to workers? No.'
While Unite sought to keep the poll results private, it was an early sign that something was shifting among its membership.
Reform's popularity was crystallised last week when it gained more than 600 local council seats, handing power to a party that rejects workers' rights reforms and is pushing for a Doge-style crackdown on waste.
Given the party's bold ambitions, union bosses are unsurprisingly rattled.
'We have anecdotal evidence of people leaving unions and joining Reform instead,' claims one party insider.
Farage, a former City trader, has spent months courting voters who were traditionally on the Left, notably using Reform's local election launch rally at JCB earlier this year to declare that he was 'on the side of working people'.
He reiterated that message in a working men's club in Durham a month later. Reform, he said, was now 'the party of working people' and was parking its 'tanks' on Labour's lawn in Red Wall areas.
However, union bosses believe it is a message that masks his true anti-worker sentiment.
Christina McAnea, Unison's chief, last week urged staff at Reform-controlled councils to join the UK's biggest union in order to protect themselves from Farage's planned war on waste.
Specifically, this was in response to the Reform's leader's plan to replicate Elon Musk's controversial cost-cutting department in the US.
In a sign of what's to come, Farage has argued that some council workers should seek 'alternative careers very, very quickly'.
Since Reform's triumph in the local elections, the party has submitted 3,000 Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to root out examples of waste in councils, specifically targeting diversity, climate change and 'nanny-state' initiatives.
However, as well as vowing to slash jobs in these areas, Farage has also opposed the incoming Employment Rights Bill, which is set to hand unions greater powers, and pledged to crack down on home working.
All of which has put Reform on a collision course with union activists on the Left.
Yet even this has not dampened Reform's popularity among workers, many of whom have been won over after losing faith in mainstream politics.
Farage's appearance at British Steel's Scunthorpe steelworks last month only strengthened this support, as he threw his weight behind attempts to save the plant.
Despite capturing the headlines and drawing local attention, one leading union figure said Farage's appearance left most members 'horrified'.
Even so, there's a growing concern in senior union circles that the workers whom they believe are under threat from Reform's politics are also being lured away.
As a result, union chiefs are creating a game plan to tackle both Farage and their own members.
'Farage is the ultimate snake-oil salesman,' Ms McAnea argued last week, days after she urged council workers to sign up to protect themselves from planned cuts.
Tackling Reform's rise was a major focus at a recent lunch hosted by the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union, which represents almost 200,000 civil servants.
The Trades Union Congress (TUC) has also been holding political strategy meetings and promoting clips on social media of workers asking why Farage wants them to lose their jobs.
Paul Nowak, the head of the TUC, is one of many leading the fight against Farage.
'Farage is a political fraud – he cosplays as a working-class champion but he's on the side of billionaires and bad bosses,' he says.
'Let's be clear. Farage doesn't give a damn about British industry or British workers. If he did, he wouldn't have hit the campaign trail for Donald Trump.
'And he wouldn't have voted against the Employment Rights Bill, which will ban exploitative zero-hours contracts and end 'fire and rehire' [practices], at every stage in Parliament.
'Farage and Reform aren't on the side of working people – they'll jump on any bandwagon they can to exploit division.'
His concerns echo the views of those across the union movement, where bosses fear that Reform's threats to workers' rights are being overlooked by disillusioned employees desperate for change.
Gawain Little, the general secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions, is another union chief who believes the party merely claims 'to be the friend of workers to get votes', reiterating how Farage has opposed the Government's flagship workers' rights reforms.
'I would expect nothing else from a privately educated millionaire,' he adds.
In response, a Reform UK spokesman said that 'instead of attacking us with smears', unions should 'try and understand why so many of their members are supporting us'.
Indeed, even highly critical union leaders can't deny that Reform is gaining ground, with many saying it should serve as a much-needed wake-up call for Labour.
'The anger that has driven many working people to vote Reform is real and we have every right to be angry,' says Little. 'For decades, we have seen falling living standards, cuts to public services and the break-up of our communities.
'It is up to this Labour Government to offer an alternative that puts money in the pockets of working people.
'If Labour fail to deliver for working people, [Reform] will reap the rewards at the ballot box, and fakers like Farage will be the beneficiaries.'
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